“Bible animals: frogs and flies, lice and locusts”
Exodus 8:1-2
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Bugs! Creepy, crawly, crazy, crispy, crunchy bugs!
Entomologists, (that’s people who study them, in case you didn’t know!), say that there are at least one million different kinds of insects in the world. And even then, they’re very sure they haven’t discovered them all, and probably never will!
And how many insects are there in the world? That’s a guess too! But, at any given moment, they suggest that there are as many as ten quintillion of them, (that’s a 1 followed by nineteen zeros!), which, suffice it to say, is a really big number! To put it another way, that comes out to two hundred million insects for every human on the planet!
And it’s no surprise. After all, one ant nest in Jamaica is thought to have 630,000 members, a South American termite nest can have three million, and a locust swarm can reach up to one billion! One East African termite queen can lay an egg every two seconds, coming to right about forty-three thousand eggs a day!
That’s a lot of bugs!
Have you ever seen close-up pictures of bugs? A Los Angeles photographer named Andrei Duman likes to dabble in what’s called “macrophotography,” a fancy name for taking extremely close-up pictures. And after visiting eighty countries around the world, he’s zoomed in on lots and lots of bugs like a longhorn beetle, a brown wasp, a tiger dragonfly, a soldier fly, and a black ant. And let’s not forget about a couple of our favorites--the deer tick and the mosquito.
Now that you’re sufficiently creeped out, let me introduce you to our animals for the day--frogs and flies, lice and locusts.
I’ll start with the words of Exodus chapter 8, verse 1: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Let My people go, that they may serve Me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs’”’” (Exodus 8:1-2). “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Say to Aaron, “Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt”’” (Exodus 8:16). “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh, as he goes out to the water, and say to him, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Or else, if you will not let My people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people, and into your houses’”’” (Exodus 8:20-21). And one more in chapter 10: “If you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country, and they shall cover the face of the land” (Exodus 10:4-5).
Let’s step back for a moment to see what’s going on.
As you probably already know, the book of Exodus tells of how God led His people out of the land of Egypt and to the Promised Land. They had lived there in Egypt for as long as four hundred and thirty years. And after serving as slaves for much of that time, it was finally time to go home.
But Pharaoh didn’t want them to go home. In fact, he absolutely refused to let them go home. So he would need, shall we say, a little convincing. Which takes us to the words of Exodus chapter 8.
Now before we go any further, there are some things you have to know. First, you should know a little something about Egypt.
Now when we talk about Egypt, we’re not talking about some podunk, boondocks, backwater, one horse kind of town. Instead, historians tell us that it was one of the most powerful and longest lasting civilizations to ever occupy earth. While Rome was powerful militarily, so was Egypt. While Greece was known for its culture and intellect, so was Egypt. And while China was known for ruling thousands of years, so was Egypt. Egypt was, for as long as five centuries, the richest and most powerful kingdom in the world!
And talk about building projects! Think about the pyramids of Giza, the largest one being five hundred feet high and eight hundred feet wide, built out of more than two million blocks of stone, some of them weighing as much as sixteen tons. Each pyramid, they say, is a masterpiece of technical skill and engineering!
Or think of the Great Sphinx of Giza, certainly one of the most recognizable statues in the world. As one author wrote, “More than simply a symbol of ancient and modern Egypt, it’s the very embodiment of antiquity and mystery itself. Over the centuries, it has fired the imaginations of poets and scientists, adventurers and travelers.”
Or think of Abu Simbel, a rock-cut temple with its colossal statues as high as seventy feet--seven stories tall!
For good reason, Egypt was revered as one of the most territorially, militarily, culturally, and technologically sophisticated nations in the world!
And its king, its monarch, its pharaoh, was no slouch either. He made the laws. He collected taxes. He oversaw the land. He dispensed justice. He declared war. He held the power over life and death.
Even more, as far as the people were concerned, he wasn’t just a link between the people and the gods, he was a god! When he lived, he was Horus, the god of healing and protection. When he died, he was Osiris, the god of life and death and resurrection.
Yet it was to him and his kingdom that Moses came one day and said, “Let my people go!”
So what happened next? Let’s just say that, by the time it was all over, Egypt was absolutely devastated. Nothing like it had ever happened before, and nothing like it would ever happen again.
First, the Nile River, the great Nile River, turned to blood. Even more, as the Bible says, all the rivers, all the canals, all the ponds, all the pools, and all the water in vessels of wood and stone all turned to blood too. “And the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile stank…There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt” (Exodus 7:21).
But even though all their water had turned into blood, Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go.
Then came the frogs. As Moses said, “If you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs” (Exodus 8:2).
Can you imagine? Here a frog, there a frog, everywhere a frog! Open a door, there’s a frog! Reach for a cup, there’s a frog! Kneading some dough for a loaf of bread? Oh no, there’s another frog! It was a veritable explosion, a stinking army of hopping and croaking frogs!
Now I can see how one frog might make a lovely pet for a child, but never in a million years would you want to find one in your bathtub, in your pantry, or under the covers of your bed! Or imagine waking up, and there’s a huge frog laying on your pillow right next to your face!
And to make matters even worse, frogs were sacred to the Egyptians. If anyone were to kill one, even unintentionally, it was punishable by death!
And now they’re everywhere--in the bed, in the oven, underfoot. Like a blanket of filth, these slippery, slimy, wet monstrosities covered the land until everyone was sickened at the squashing crunch of each step on green pavement. Yech!
Still Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go.
What next? Gnats. As the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt” (Exodus 8:16).
Ever been outside, sitting in a lawn chair, on a cool summer night, in late June or July? And there you are, minding your own business when, all of a sudden, here comes a small cloud of biting, blood-sucking midges, punkies, sand flies, no-see-ums, gnats.
Now imagine not just a little cloud of them, but a huge swarm of them--buzzing, flying, biting--and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. They’re everywhere and in everything! In your nose. In your mouth. In your ears.
Still Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go!
What next? Flies. As Moses said, “If you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people, and into your houses. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies” (Exodus 8:21).
Now to be fair, the word “flies” is only one translation. Other translations use words like “maggots,” “fleas,” “beatles,” “ticks,” and “mosquitos.” Take your pick and, let me tell you, it’d be a literal infestation, a disaster! Imagine them creeping and crawling on you and your spouse and your children. Flies everywhere and in everything!
Still Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go.
And after God flattened their crops with hail, He sent the locusts, swarms and swarms of locusts, covering the ground till it was black, eating everything in sight. It was the absolute worst locust invasion in history.
Still Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go.
It’s funny if you think about it. God could have used quite a lot of ways to judge old Pharaoh and bring him to his knees. He could have sent a foreign army as He did with Israel and Judah. He could have stopped the rain and caused a drought throughout the land.
Instead, He chose to fight with weapons that no one else but the sovereign Lord had His disposal. Only the one true God had the powers of all creation, even frogs and flies, and lice and locusts, at His command.
For you see, (and this is the most important point of all!), the Lord wasn’t simply showing His power over Pharaoh and over Egypt. He was attacking the gods of Egypt.
What do I mean? You see, Egypt had quite a lot of gods. As far as we know, they worshiped as many as two thousand of them, like Heqet, a god with a frog’s head, or Set, the god of the desert, or Khepri, a god with the head of a fly, or Serapis, the god of healing, or Imhotep, the god of medicine, or Nut, the goddess of the sky, or Ra, the god of the sun, or Isis, the goddess who protected children.
Yet not one of them, no matter how powerful the people believed them to be, stood a chance before the God of all creation.
As the Lord Himself said in Exodus chapter 12: “I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, for I am the Lord!” (Exodus 12:12).
Did you know that each of these plagues can also tell us something about Jesus?
Just as the Nile and all the waters of Egypt were turned into blood, Jesus sweat great drops of blood. Just as frogs jumped and croaked throughout all of Egypt, men spoke lies to secure His conviction. Just as gnats and flies stung every man, woman, and child, men mocked Jesus and spit on Him. Just as hail battered their crops, so men beat Jesus. Just as locusts devoured every last plant in the land, so men gambled for His last piece of clothes. Just as darkness covered all of Egypt, so the sun, for three hours, refused to shine. And just as every firstborn son of Egypt was slain, so Jesus, God’s Son, died for our salvation.
And so we cry with all of creation, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12).
Dear Father, as You once displayed Your power over all the gods of Egypt, so guide and protect even us today, that we may honor You and serve You as we should, for Jesus’ sake. Amen